@morrismm Since the current format of CC threads doesn’t allow one to respond to a particular post in the way that Facebook does, the best way to accomplish it is to use the post number (as you have) and quote a section of the post you are responding to in a quote box. Then, your comments are at least seen with the relevant comments you are replying to.
Agree with most of your quote above with one exception.
Much of Bushwick has become so gentrified that I would no longer include it in the list of neighborhoods as dangerous as the image of NYC during its high-crime era. It has also become an area with a thriving indie music/art scene which the Village and Williamsburg had before most bona-fide indie artists/musicians ended up getting priced out. This has also affected areas of Ridgewood, Queens bordering Bushwick.
And it is likely not too long before they may be forced out of Bushwick as rents are skyrocketing there due to the increasing popularity of the neighborhood for undergrad/grad students and recent graduates who desire to live close to such a vibrant indie art/music scene.
Incidentally, I have had no issues walking through Bushwick as late as after 2 am because with the subway schedule and being structured the way they are relative to my own neighborhood, it is sometimes faster to walk home than to take the subway and I’d rather save the cash than splurge on a cab/car service.
I would not have dared to walk through Bushwick even during the day back in the early '00s or moreso during my childhood/teen years of the '80’s and '90s as back then, it was dangerous even during the day.
Makes me think `Do or Die,’ cobrat. Crazy rep.
Bushwick’s past reputation for being dangerous in the early '00s or earlier was well-deserved. I not only knew a few who lived there back then, but also helped a HS friend’s family move into an aunt’s house in the area in the late '90s after they were evicted by a jerky landlord who was looking to sell their apartment building* during a summer break.
Back then, the area was very run down and I heard gunshots at ~3-4 in the AFTERNOON on a hot summer day. The aunt who lived there said that happened every day and she and her family had grown used to it. They did make sure to drive me back home afterwards rather than risk my getting mugged/molested on the streets/subway.
- Their former apartment building is now an NYU dorm.
Yup, learned this the hard way. Decades ago my husband and I took the ferry over and while everyone else disembarked we just sat there. Eventually we were the only ones left and an employee eventually asked why we were still there. “Just enjoying the ride,” we said, to which he responded “Well the ride is over, you need to get off.” LOL, we just assumed they immediately reboarded and headed back.
@cobrat most of NYC was dangerous to walk through during the day in the 80s. The whole city is pretty spiffy now.
@morrismm #79 post, this is great info. Aren’t they building a big ferris wheel near the ferry terminal? And shopping area? When is that opening?
^^That’s quite an exaggeration to say most of NYC was dangerous to walk through in the 80s. Certainly not Manhattan below Harlem and most parts of Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the northern parts of the Bronx.
Neither one of these statements is true. I say this as someone who has lived in Brooklyn since before the 80s, raised my daughter in Clinton Hill and Bed Stuy (you know, the “do or die” neighborhood), and lived to tell the tale (as did she).
@oldmom4896 Understood that you lived to tell the tale! As someone who also was in the City at those times, Brooklyn and Manhattan mainly, my experience was that it was not safe to walk through much of the city, even the Upper East Side during the day! I also lived to tell the tale, and the tales were many!
@NoVADad99 For starters during that time, there was a serial rapist in midtown for awhile; the subways were so dangerous during the day that you could barely look people in the eye. Remember Bernhard Goetz? My friends–everyone–had a mugging or two to talk about even as kids going to school. Remember the car alarms going off at all hours all night? Walking along the sidewalks you had to be sure to look in the slanted store windows to see who was following you. Remember the cross-body hand bags with chain straps to keep people from cutting them loose? Nora Ephron wrote about having to turn her diamond engagement ring in so that no one would take it. In Park Slope there were teens setting homeless people on fire. The plants on the Upper EAst Side window boxes had chains around them to keep them from being stolen. Central Park would regularly have shootings during the day. I dared not go through there. (I had a friend who worked at the DA office and it didn’t help that he brought home his work.) These are just a few things off the top of my head! How quickly the memories fade . . . .
Maybe it wasn’t Nora Ephron but another well-known author wrote about that you couldn’t have anything on display.
It’s one thing to be prudent, but people were not being attacked in broad daylight in large numbers. I was in college then, commuting to school in downtown Brooklyn from Forest Hills. I’d ride the F train every day from morning, and many times took night classes and didn’t go home until 10pm. I’d go to clubs in Manhattan and would ride the subway home at 3 or 4 am. Nothing ever happened to me except one morning on my way to Grand Central Station at 5am some kids tried to mess with me. That’s what having ‘street smarts’ will prevent most of these things. Keep a lookout for potential trouble and move away from it. In the mid to late 70s I would take the subway from the Bronx into Manhattan regularly (and many of my HS classmates who rode the subway from Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan to the Bronx every school day), many times at night, and would walk home about a mile from the subway station to my house. Nothing happened.
@cobrat:
Didn’t know Bushwick had gentrified, in the day it was one of the hotspots for murder and such, I know Bed Sty has started to gentrify as well (I never thought Harlem would gentrify, to be honest).
As far as being safe in NYC in the 1980’s, it depended a lot on where you lived into how dangerous it was. Subway crime was at a high level, the 1980’s were when the crack epidemic was raging, and as a result things like thefts and muggings could happen almost anywhere. I lived in the bronx in the late 80’s, and there was a lot of petty crime, if I left anything in the yard of the house I was living in, it would get stolen, including very cheap lawn furniture. The murder rate did go to 2500 a year, but a lot of that was centered in certain areas, if you lived in the South Bronx, East New York, Bushwick, parts of Harlem, Williamsburg and other areas at the center of the drug business, you would face that a lot more than if you lived in other areas.
There is no doubt that NYC was a lot less safe back then, but as someone who was in NYC in the late 70’s and 80’s, it all depended where you were. Yeah, it would be stupid to show a valuable ring on the subway, but these days even with lowered crime there has been a lot of theft of phones and other electronics, and being smart is always a smart thing when in the middle of crowds. As far as being unsafe in the day in places like the upper east side or the village or whatnot, I would question that, while there is always the chance of street crime, always has been, it was highly unlikely in those areas and the stats of the time support that.
@Dustyfeathers: Your statements about the danger of walking through much of the city * even in the daylight hours* is beyond laughable, so much so as to paint your characterization of life in NYC at that time as fictitious.
Your descriptions sound like the info travelers were told to follow, remembering at all times never to ride above 96th street on the #2 train.
Nora Ephron was right to turn her ring around then, and were she with us, still. All depends on the moment.
Thanks Soozievt #80. I know. I was just being a bit gnarly. But CC never used to have the “like” option. So maybe later they can add a “reply” option.
I hope that never happens!!! Yahoo stock message boards used to be like CC, but the reply to posts feature ruined them.
Heading to the city in 2 weeks to stay with my D for a week - it’s been 2 years since my last visit and reading the thread just makes me happy. I love the city!
The Museum of the City of New York is a free gem at 103rd & Fifth Ave, I’ve walked from the mid 30s and just marvel along the way.
Let’s not forget the Christmas lights in the department store windows, free and awe inspiring -
One of my favorite things to do is take the bus to the Cloisters. It’s a little over an hour from midtown and a frame at way to see the city.
The Metro card weekly deal is my best friend!
For those of you who are 65 or older, you are entitled to half fare on the buses and subways. Here’s how:
http://web.mta.info/nyct/fare/rfindex.htm
If you go in person, it takes about half an hour and you walk out with your card complete with photo. The office is a block from the Museum of the American Indian (free), and just a few blocks from the Staten Island Ferry and the ferry dock to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Federal Reserve Bank, South Street Seaport, etc. Or you can mail the application with passport-size photo as instructed. Or you can go to a fare booth in any subway station, show proof of age, and you’ll get a two-trip Metrocard for the price of one trip. You can collect these cards, get one every time you pass a booth. (You can’t refill these cards or get/fill them at the machines at all subway stations.)
Aside from Medicare, this is my very favorite benefit of being an official “senior citizen”!
It certainly has since the mid-late '00s. Got to see it through going to see my indie artist/musician friends exhibit/perform their art/music in various venues in that neighborhood, visiting some who live there including a few longtime residents, and walking through that neighborhood.
A couple of friends bought into a newly built fancy condo populated mostly by well-to-do young urban professionals there which wouldn’t be out of place in the UES or today’s Chelsea.
The very area of Bushwick it is located in was one where I would have avoided going to even during the day back in the early '00s or earlier because of the then prevailing high violent crime back then.
Ironically, the consequent skyrocketing rental rates have become such that several undergrad classmates/alums I knew who lived there have had to move out to less expensive areas*.
- Various areas of Queens such as Elmhurst/Jackson Heights, more northern areas of Ridgewood, Bed-Stuy, etc
@cobrat:
That’s okay, the impossible seems to be happening, the South Bronx is starting to gentrify, the area around Port Morris (south of 138th street), which is just over the river from Manhattan, part industrial, part residential, lot of artists have moved there and they have been renovating buildings there. I am surprised the Grand Concourse hasn’t revived more, it would be an absolutely beautiful place to live, near Yankee Stadium, and a lot of those buildings are frankly stunning if they get renoved, unlike buildings on the lower east side and williamsburgh, they were not slums when built. The sad truth is, though, that the artists and the like who are willing to move to those areas to find affordable housing, soon get pushed out by luxury condos and rentals, as do the people living there, it would be great to see an area stablize and not become another neighborhood for the well off only, but I haven’t seen that yet.
There were parts of the city that were unsafe in the early 80’s but a good deal of the city was already gentrified and rapidly becoming so. As my daughter’s theatre company is performing their season now (in a cultural center on the LES) I had the opportunity to spend all Saturday there and walk around. The gentrification process is happening so fast there that hip restaurants that opened a few years ago are now gone and being replaced by even newer, hipper places. One of her friend’s mothers was reminiscing with me about the old days. She was among the group of newly hired teachers who were laid off in the fiscal crisis of 1975 at which point she decided to become an interior decorator and studied at Parsons, part of the New School. When classes ended the entire class walked together to the subway in the West Village because at 9 PM during the week it was unsafe. It sounds ridiculous to tell someone that but it was true. I lived in Brooklyn Heights then and I can recall that if I stayed in Manhattan past that hour, I always cabbed it home. On the weekend during the afternoon the subways were pretty deserted making you feel unsafe waiting for a train. I have friends who live in a brownstone in a very prime area of Park Slope. When they bought it in 1973, there were burned out buildings and it was not safe to walk from the subway at night. Fifth Avenue in Park Slope now a hip street of restaurants and boutiques was filled with low end, numbers parlors and so on…
The Museum of the City of New York, one of my all-time favorite places from the days of going there on school trips… is great but not free… someone posted that and they might have been there on some kind of special “free admission” day.